AuthorNathaniel Hawthorne
NarratorKatinka Wolf
Duration2h 30m
CategoriesAdult Fiction, Classics
Key StageA Level
PublisherNaxos
VersionAbridged
Set in the harsh Puritan community of 17th-century Boston, when an adulterous entanglement results in an illegitimate birth for Hester Prynne, she and her daughter Pearl must suffer not only public disgrace but rejection from Pearl's father, who is trapped by the rules of society. Hester draws on her inner strength and certainty of spirit to emerge as one of the first true heroines of American fiction.
Author: Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Author Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Narrator Richard E. Grant
Duration 2h 12m
He is the Little Prince, the mysterious, innocent and beautiful boy who appears to a pilot stranded in the desert and makes an extraordinary request. He has captured the hearts of millions of readers around the world since his story first appeared in 1943, written down by an aristocratic French aviator who soon after disappeared during a flight acr...
View Book
Author: Charlotte Bronte
Author Charlotte Bronte
Narrator Charlotte Ritchie
Duration 21h 29m
Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Charlotte Ritchie, best known for her roles as Oregon in Channel 4's Fresh Meat, Hannah in the BBC Three comedy Siblings, and as Barbara Gilbert in BBC drama Call the Midwife. With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding sch...
View Book
Author: Emile Zola
Author Emile Zola
Narrator Traci Svensgaard
Duration 6h 41m
In a dingy apartment on the Passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, Th‚rŠse Raquin is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille. The numbing tedium of her life is suddenly shattered when she embarks on a turbulent affair with her husband's earthy friend, Laurent. But their passion for each other soon compels the lovers to commit a crime t...
View Book
Author: Emile Zola
Author Emile Zola
Narrator Leighton Pugh
Duration 19h 55m
Germinal is one of the most striking novels in the French tradition. Widely regarded as Zola's masterpiece, the novel describes the working conditions of French coalminers in the 1860s in harsh and realistic terms it is visceral, graphic and unrelenting. Its strong socialist principles and vivid accounts of the miners' strikes meant that the novel...
View Book
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Author Nathaniel Hawthorne
Narrator Donada Peters
Duration 6h 56m
A stark tale of adultery, guilt, and social repression in Puritan New England, The Scarlet Letter is a foundational work of American literature. Nathaniel Hawthorne's exploration of the dichotomy between the public and private self, internal passion and external convention, gives us the unforgettable Hester Prynne, who discovers strength in the fac...
View Book
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Author Nathaniel Hawthorne
Narrator Tavia Gilbert, Christopher Price
Duration 10h 7m
The Scarlet Letter was originally published in 1850 and was a bestseller at the time. This powerful American story of secret love and sin, of spiritual hypocrisy and moral courage, and of female bravery during a time when women were rarely respected, resonated with readers then and continues to do so now. Set in the staunchly Puritan world of...
View Book
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Author Nathaniel Hawthorne
Narrator Nicky Henson
Duration 20m
Dr Heidigger's Experiment is a short story by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, about a scientist who claims to have been sent water from the Fountain of Youth. He calls together his old friends and invites them to taste the waters. The tale explores the transience of youth, and the desires that many have but few acknowledge.
View Book
Author: Charles Dickens
Author Charles Dickens
Narrator Simon Vance
Duration 31h 21m
The most gorgeously theatrical of all Dickens's novels, Nicholas Nickleby follows the delightful adventures of a hearty young hero in nineteenth-century England. Nicholas, a gentleman's son fallen upon hard times, must set out to make his way in the world. His journey is accompanied by some of the most swaggering scoundrels and unforgettable eccent...
View Book
Author: Jonathan Swift
Author Jonathan Swift
Narrator Jasper Britton
Duration 35h 15m
Lemuel Gulliver, a slightly staid ship's doctor, relates the tales of his astonishing travels. He encounters the tiny, warring Lilliputians; the giant, sceptical Brobdingnagians; the ludicrously intellectual Laputans; and the idealistic - if rather stolid - Houyhnhnms and their bestial servants, the Yahoos. An immediate best-seller when it was firs...
View Book
Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Author Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Narrator Various
Duration 1h 32m
Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Jessica Brown Findlay, Jamael Westman and Sheila Atim. 'The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing' Written with barely controlled fury after she was confined to her room for 'nerves' and forbidden to write, Gilman's pioneer...
View Book